Attacking violence in the media not the answer

The tragedy in Newtown, Conn., is perhaps one of the most affecting moments in recent history. I have been seeing a lot of responses to the shooting and many of them have me worried. As a young person who could be called a “geek” in most common parlance, I am uneasy that one of my own hobbies, video gaming as well as the culture surrounding it, has come under siege by those who believe that they represent an easy target in dire times.

A lot of people are asking a lot of questions about the Dec. 14 events and the most important are going to be “how did this happen?” and “how can we prevent this in the future?”

Both are valid questions, but the answer is not going to come from obfuscating the issue, a common tactic in the current debate. The main method of distraction that lobbyists for the political right are using is an attack on what they call our “culture of violence.” This so-called culture is apparently the product of violent movies, music and video games. One of the most egregious attacks has come from Wayne LaPierre of the NRA. LaPierre referred to the video game industry as a “shadow industry” dedicated to apparently destroying all that is good in our culture. This sentiment is shortsighted and unnecessarily hateful.

The fact is that violence is a common theme in a large portion of the media that we, as a culture, consume on a regular basis. Violence, as a device in storytelling, is almost always the direct result of conflict, whether it is on a large scale like warfare or a more personal conflict and conflict is generally interesting or worth becoming invested in on an emotional level. Violence is often the method by which conflicts are resolved and it would be intellectually dishonest of me to deny that it is often the most interesting and engaging method by which conflicts can resolved.

This isn’t new. Sophocles ended “Oedipus Rex” by having the titular protagonist gouge his eyes out with a pair of needles as an act of penitence. Shakespeare ended “Macbeth” with a scene that includes a pitched battle during which multiple characters die horribly. John Ford, often considered to be one of the first great American filmmakers, punctuated his films with violence. “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence” in particular posits that violence is necessary for the advancement of American society.

But none of these are video games, what some groups believe are the cause of a young man’s broken psyche. Targeting video games and singling them out is nothing new. The interactivity of video games makes them unique and their newness makes those who don’t understand them distrustful of what they can do. But a lack of understanding does not excuse deliberate misinformation. Yes, video games are violent (to a degree), but the existence of violent video games doesn’t precipitate a so-called culture of violence.

A cornerstone of media studies involves the concept of the culture industry, a homogeneous entity that creates culture in response to the needs of the society. A key component of the culture industry is the “utopian ideal,” which can basically be summarized as why we consume what we do. Frederic Jameson postulated in his paper “The Politics of Utopia” that what we consume contains one or more utopian ideals that appeal to us. It isn’t a stretch to say that experiencing conflict and its resolution, violent or otherwise, is a popular ideal that we like to explore in our media. In other words, violent media outlets aren’t created to influence the culture, but rather to fill an unstated need. The art that we produce is reflective of the society into which it is produced. So maybe we do have a violent culture, but I sincerely doubt that this is because of the video games we produce. The media are only there because we asked for it, after a fashion. These attempts to target our nation’s culture industry do little to resolve the debate and only succeed at muddying the real issues that need to be discussed. Despite the American culture industry’s flaws, the day that we hinder the First Amendment to protect the Second is the day that the tenets of our nation have failed. Censorship will solve none of the questions that have been created by the loss of these 26 lives and if we really want to honor their loss then we must act wisely and judiciously.

Sebring, a Coronado resident, is a junior at the University of Rochester, where he is studying English and computer science.